Collection of Cosmic Dust: Past And Future

Abstract

The collection of cosmic dust began in the middle of the last century with the recovery of spheres from the ocean floor and from Greenland ice (Murray and Renard 1891). The occurence of native metal in some of the deep sea spheres was the first clue that they were extraterrestrial. The deep sea spheres were described as “chondres” and their origin was attributed to the atmospheric melting of meteors. Polar ice and the ocean floor sediments often contain only minor amounts of magnetic terrestrial particles > 100µm and in these sites it is possible to collect rather large magnetic extraterrestrial particles that fell in historic times. In the intervening century an extensive series of particle searches were carried out in nearly all likely types of terrestrial collection sites. These included glaciers, islands, beaches, deserts, lakes, rooftops, rainwater, and all levels of the atmosphere up to low Earth orbit. Most of these efforts were not successful in collecting particles that were later proven to be successful recoveries were made from a beach sand, a desert, and the stratosphere. All of these efforts are described in an excellent review by Hodge (1981).